The Republican nominee in a competitive House race in North Carolina was suspended from betting on the trading platform Kalshi on Monday after placing bets on her own contest.
Laurie Buckhout, an Army veteran, purchased less than $1,000 of contracts “related to her own candidacy,” a violation of Kalshi’s prohibition on users making trades with insider information or on future events they could influence. The platform said Ms. Buckhout had cooperated with its inquiry and received a three-year ban from the platform and a fine of nearly $2,600.
Ms. Buckhout, a retired colonel who served in combat in Iraq and worked briefly in the Trump administration last year as the acting assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy, is running in North Carolina’s highly competitive First Congressional District. She expressed remorse on Monday for her betting.
“I bet on myself. Literally,” she said in a statement. “It was a dumb mistake, and as soon as I learned there was an issue, I worked to make it right. Safe to say my career as a Kalshi trader was short-lived.”
As online gambling — and prediction markets like Kalshi — have proliferated in recent years, trading platforms have dealt with a series of insider trading incidents, with athletes and politicians placing bets on their own performances. Such activity has led to suspensions and criminal charges in the sports world and is spreading to political campaigns as well.
In April, Kalshi sanctioned three political candidates for attempting to bet on their own races. But Ms. Buckhout’s punishment appeared to be the first in a high-profile contest that could affect the balance of power in Congress in the fall.
She faces Representative Don Davis, a Black Democrat whose heavily Black district in northeastern North Carolina was redrawn by state Republicans to include conservative areas, making it easier to flip. The seat, which the Cook Political Report has rated “lean Republican,” represents one of Republicans’ best pickup opportunities in the country. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee was quick to assail Ms. Buckhout on Monday, calling her “Lyin’ Laurie.”
“Looks like Laurie Buckhout is getting a jump-start on her insider trading aspirations,” Madison Andrus, a spokeswoman for the committee, said in a statement. “If Buckhout can’t be trusted to follow the most basic prediction market rules, there is no chance she can be trusted as an ethical representative for North Carolina families.”
Kalshi has been at the center of a fierce political fight over the regulation of prediction markets, which allow users to bet on a wide array of activities, from television show outcomes to major news events. Opponents criticize prediction markets as an unregulated form of online gambling. A host of states have sued such platforms or attempted to restrict them, and Kalshi and other prediction markets have fought back in court.
Kalshi meted out a handful of other punishments on Monday, including a lifelong ban to George Santos, the former congressman who the platform said had engaged in insider trading and had not cooperated with its investigation. A regulatory agency found last month that Mr. Santos had suggested he would attend the 2026 State of the Union, then skipped the event and collected about $17,000 from bets against his own appearance.
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